Postmark Murder (6 page)

She bolted the door; it was an instinctive act. No one had followed them all the way from the silent rooming house. She took a long, steadying breath.

Trying to keep her voice easy and calm she talked, as she always did with Jonny—a little running accompaniment to action. They would put away coats and hats; then Jonny would have some milk. Jonny with her customary and rather touching self-reliance put her bright red coat neatly on a hanger, standing on tiptoes, stretching the length of her sturdy little legs.

She seemed tired, Laura thought, watching her, as they went back to the kitchen and got out milk and cookies, tired and perhaps still a little puzzled, but that was all. Suki heard them from Jonny’s bedroom and came in, meowing hoarsely in greeting, and eyed the milk with interest. She left Jonny pouring milk into a saucer for Suki, smiling at Suki who in the frantically voracious way of a Siamese kitten dove into the milk, sputtering it widely as he lapped. So that was all right, Laura thought; she was certain that Jonny was not aware of the real and terrible significance of those moments in the house at Koska Street. She left Jonny in the kitchen, closing the door so the child could not hear, and went to the telephone. This time when she dialed Matt’s hotel apartment he answered.

“Matt! Oh Matt, he’s dead!”

“Laura, for God’s sake, who’s dead?”

“He was murdered. I saw him—”

“Who?”

“Conrad Stanislowski.”

“Conrad— What on earth are you talking about?”

“Matt, he came here. This afternoon. Just after you left. He came to see Jonny. And then a woman phoned—” The story poured out like a flood, short as words could make it, long enough to cover the span of a man’s life. Halfway through, Matt cried, “Laura, take it easy! Say that again.
Where
did he go?
Who
phoned you?”

She told him again, and then couldn’t stop herself repeating until Matt said suddenly and sharply, “Okay, I’ve got it. You are sure he was dead?”

“I saw him. I felt his pulse. He was murdered. He couldn’t have killed himself—not like that—”

“What’s the address again? All right, I’ve got it. I’ll see to things. Wait till I come.”

S
HE PUT DOWN THE
telephone. The terrible, invisible burden slipped for a moment from her own shoulders.

There was a mirror above the small table where the telephone stood, and she had a swift glimpse of herself in it—her short brown hair rumpled, her gray eyes brilliant, her mouth, lipsticked with crimson, looking very red and tense against the whiteness of her face. Her white silk blouse was wrinkled. The tiny string of pearls Conrad had given her on her eighteenth birthday gleamed softly in the light.

She gave Jonny supper; she fed the kitten. She read aloud from Jonny’s favorite book—her favorite probably because it was profusely illustrated with pictures that perhaps made the story, in English, reasonably clear to Jonny. Still Matt did not telephone. It was Jonny’s bedtime.

Jonny was efficient and self-reliant in all the little chores of tooth-brushing and nail-scrubbing and dressing; there was something oddly pathetic in the matter-of-fact way she set about the nightly routine, for obviously she had been trained to do all those things for herself at a very early age. She had her bath, she got herself into her pajamas, she brushed and braided her hair, she got herself briskly into bed. The kitten, worn out with chasing a crumpled piece of cellophane around the room, curled himself up on Jonny’s shoulder, his eyes as blue as Jonny’s and as sleepy. Jonny’s black eyelashes were drooping when Laura turned out the light.

Tragedy, so far, had not touched her. Laura was sure of that.

Matt came only a few moments later. The buzzer sounded sharply and she ran to open the door. His coat was flung over his shoulders; his black hair was damp from the fog, his Irish blue eyes were blazing in a white face. “I came as soon as I could.”

“What have they done?”

“You look— Wait.” He dropped his coat over a chair and went back to the kitchen. She followed him and watched as he got ice from the refrigerator and glasses from the cupboard. He knew where she kept her small supply of whiskey and poured a generous amount into each glass, filling it up with water. “Here,” he said, “take this. Drink it.” He put the glass in her hand and led the way to the living room. “Sit down there.”

She sank down into a deep lounge chair, with its sage-green upholstery which she had chosen so carefully so the room would be all grays and greens; gray rug, soft gray walls, green chairs, gay primrose-yellow curtains, and bright splashes of yellow and green and blue in the patterned cover for the sofa. It was a charming, a warm and pleasant room; a few old pieces of gleaming, dark wood gave it dignity and grace. It was not a room in which to talk of murder.

“What did you do?” Laura asked.

“I reported it to the police, of course. Then I drove out to Koska Street. They were already there, that is, a squad car was there when I got there, and then the rest of them turned up. Your Doctor Stevens arrived in the midst of it. He said you had called him to come there and he had been delayed on a previous call. There was nothing he could do, of course. The police will be here to get your statement, I told them why you had to come home before you called them or anybody. I explained about Jonny and I think they understood. Where is Jonny? Asleep?”

“Yes. I don’t think she realized what happened, Matt. Seeing her father upset her; she cried afterward. But I don’t think she knew anything about the—the rooming house. I mean, what had happened there. She stayed in the hall; she couldn’t see. She was puzzled; she knew something was wrong. But she’s all right now. I’m sure she didn’t guess anything like the truth.”

“That’s all right then. Now,” Matt sat down in the chair opposite her, “tell me everything again, Laura. All the details. Don’t hurry. Take your time about it.”

He glanced at his watch, though, as he spoke. She thought, Matt is a lawyer, he wants to hear everything; he wants to go over it with me before the police arrive. Because I found a man, murdered.

She told the story in detail, slowly, taking her time. He watched her, his face a little in shadow above the shade of the lamp on the table beside him, his eyes intent, lifting his glass now and then and sipping from it. When she had finished he thought for a moment. Then he said, “All right. That woman who phoned you, are you sure it was the woman you met on the steps?”

“Yes. It was the same voice, the same accent. Besides, there was nobody else in the rooming house.”

“Would you recognize her again if you saw her?”

“I think so. Yes. I recognized her voice. Matt,
could
she have killed him? She was running away. She had her bag with her. She ran across the sidewalk and jumped into the taxi and was gone before I could stop her. And then on the steps she said, ‘Go away. I should not have done it.’ That’s all she said. Did she mean—” Laura caught her breath.
“Did
she mean, ‘I should not have killed him’?”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking that, too— I don’t know. I do know that she was one of the lodgers in the rooming house. Her name is Maria Brown. The landlady—the police questioned her—said that Maria Brown had been there for a month or so, she had her rent paid ahead of time for about three weeks, she had given the landlady no warning of leaving. That’s all I heard. There was a good deal of commotion out there, of course, with fingerprint men and flashlights and everybody milling around, the whole mechanism of investigation. The police will find Maria Brown, all right. But about Conrad Stanislowski—I wish we knew more about how he happened to come here. I’d like to know why he begged you not to tell anyone he was here. He told you to wait for a few days before you told us. He said that he could identify himself. Why would he want to keep it a secret, even for a few days? What did he expect to do in that time? Rather,” Matt said slowly, “why should it conceivably be necessary for him to do
anything
before he could come forward openly and identify himself to us?”

There was no answer to that. Laura said, “I think he was afraid. There was something about him— I am sure he was afraid of something.”

Matt lighted a cigarette. “Of course, that suggests some quarrel that it was necessary for him to settle. And it suggests that that quarrel may have ended in murder. The woman you saw could have been the instrument. Did she look, well—foreign? Polish?”

“Her accent is foreign. I don’t know whether it’s Polish or not. She was dark, pale— I only got a glimpse of her.”

Matt said thoughtfully, “Orders can come from behind the Iron Curtain. Things like that almost certainly have happened. Maria Brown could have been an instrument. If she were Polish —” He stopped. After a moment he shrugged. “But on the other hand, she may have been only an innocent bystander. She was a lodger in the house; perhaps she heard something of the murder, obviously Conrad told her your name and she may have phoned to you merely in the hope of helping him. But then he died and she simply got scared and ran away. There are people like that. Afraid of trouble. Afraid of the police. Another possibility is that she knows some evidence which she feels is dangerous to her and she is afraid to see the police. There are all sorts of possibilities, too many of them! Well, the police will certainly find Maria Brown. You said you started to question Jonny about her father. Did you?”

“No. I went back to her room and that’s when she was crying so hard and trying not to. I was sure then that he was really her father, so I didn’t question her. She was only beginning to stop crying when the phone rang and it was Maria Brown.”

“Didn’t she show any sign of knowing her father?”

“No, not a thing. She didn’t speak. She didn’t smile. She just froze. You know—whenever she is frightened or confused, she shrinks into herself and doesn’t even move.”

“I know. That’s the habit of fear. Yet perhaps that very cautiousness shows that she did recognize him. Perhaps she was waiting for him to speak or make some move or— Oh, I don’t know! How did you feel about it, Laura? Did you feel that he
was
her father?”

“Y-yes. At least at first. Then later I thought perhaps he was an impostor. But I went back to Jonny and she was crying, so I was sure he was her father.”

“And while he was here you believed him?”

“Yes, I did. It puzzled me. It was an extraordinary kind of thing. He seemed frightened and hurried and I couldn’t understand why he asked me to keep his arrival a secret, but somehow I—I did believe him.”

Matt gave her a long look, rose and began to pace up and down, his tall figure and dark head outlining themselves against the gray walls and the primrose yellow curtains at the end of the room. He stopped to pick up an ash tray, look at it with unseeing eyes and put it down again; he came back to lean one elbow on the mantel and look, in deep thought, at nothing. He had a thin, rather bony Irish face with a hawky nose, a sharp jaw line, and deep-set eyes below eyebrows that were so black they were like slashes across his face. It was not a handsome face, but it was sensitive and intelligent, and lighted by his eyes which could turn as vividly blue and sunny as a summer sea. They were then, though, a slatey cold gray. He said, “This Brown woman
could
have known Conrad in Poland, or she could have known of him. He went to the rooming house at 3936 Koska Street, so it is perfectly possible that he knew her address and went to the rooming house because she was there. Now then—she could have had orders to kill him. Or she could have killed him because of some private quarrel between them. The third alternative is that she was merely an innocent bystander. But if she stabbed him, then she either regretted it and telephoned you for help, or she phoned to get you to come to the house and thus involve you in the murder.”

“Me! But the police can’t say I did it!”

“I’m only suggesting possibilities,” Matt said quickly. “If she actually murdered him, perhaps she didn’t expect either you or the doctor to get there so soon, before she could get away. But on the other hand, as I said, if she was only an innocent bystander trying to help him, that would explain what she said to you on the steps. ‘Go away. I should not have done it,’ could mean simply she shouldn’t have phoned to you and got you into it. If, that is, somebody else killed him.”

“Who?”

“Well, for one thing he as much as admitted that he was a renegade Communist. He said he was only a minor official but still —” Matt went to the sofa and sat down, stretching out his long legs. “You said she stared at Jonny. Did she seem to recognize her?”

“No! That is—I didn’t think of that, Matt. I don’t know. It all was so hurried. She did stare at Jonny. She looked as if she couldn’t take her eyes from her. But then she saw the taxi—”

The buzzer in the hall sounded sharply. Matt sprang up. “There they are. Just tell them what you told me.”

Somehow Laura had expected a whole body of policemen, big bulky figures in blue uniforms. Instead Matt ushered in a slight, rather elderly man in a wrinkled gray suit. He had hazy gray eyes and a long, tired-looking face.

“This is Lieutenant Peabody,” Matt said. “Miss Laura March.”

The Lieutenant said, “How do you do?”

Laura, her voice unexpectedly husky, said, “Will you sit down, Lieutenant Peabody?” Suddenly and indeed absurdly the instinct of a hostess caught at her. Her home, her guest. Except he wasn’t a guest; he was a policeman coming to question her about murder. She steadied her thought and her voice and said to Matt, “I expect Lieutenant Peabody might like a drink, too.”

“Yes, of course.” Matt started for the door. “What will it be, Lieutenant? Scotch, bourbon?”

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Peabody said, “I am on duty. Not that it isn’t the kind of night that calls for a drink. But not now.” He sat down on the long sofa, at right angles to Laura, and suddenly and very wearily sighed. But in the same instant his hazy glance drifted around the room, noting details, seeing the tiny red Garnet roses on a side table, the picture which had belonged to Laura’s father, a Normandy landscape, gay with its sunlight and blue sky and its purple-pink plum trees. He examined the Chippendale wall-desk which, too, had belonged to Peter March; he eyed a table with a piecrust edge. He seemed to approve the chairs, the sofa, the odd bits Laura had added, and to guess that she had done so, a piece at a time as she could pay for them, around the nucleus that Conrad Stanley had saved for her, from her home.